Condors are being poisoned by DDT remnants in dead animals

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA — Endangered California condors living along California’s coast have a food-chain problem because they’re feeding on marine mammal carcasses contaminated with DDT, an insecticide banned in the United States in 1972.

It’s causing eggshell thinning and egg failure for the birds that are in the middle of a multimillion-dollar species recovery effort.

The DDT contamination was documented in a new study by the Ventana Wildlife Society, and partly funded by the Oregon Zoo Foundation.